Jaguar finally showed the production Type 01 in New York last night, nearly two years after a rebrand that made it a national punchline. We think the car is a stunner, and the business case behind it is stronger than the critics allow.

There are car launches, and then there are launches where an entire company is holding its breath. Last night in New York, with Florence Pugh among the guests, Jaguar pulled the covers off the production Type 01, and for a brand that hasn’t had a new car on sale in the UK since late 2024, this was very much the second kind.

We think it was worth the wait. The Type 01 looks every bit as dramatic as the Type 00 concept that caused such a stir, with a long bonnet that deliberately nods to the E-Type and a presence most luxury EVs simply don’t have. At £130,000, with orders opening in the coming months and the first customer cars due next year, it’s also the clearest sign yet that Jaguar’s reinvention is about building a smaller, far more profitable business, and the much-mocked “Copy Nothing” campaign was only ever the opening act.

Why Jaguar needed the Type 01

It’s easy to forget how much trouble Jaguar was in before anyone had heard of Copy Nothing. Global sales had fallen to 26,862 cars in the 2024/25 financial year, an 85% drop on 2018, as an ageing range of saloons and SUVs lost ground to BMW, Audi and Mercedes. The badge that once put E-Types on Steve McQueen’s driveway had become a mid-ranking executive car, and analyst Matthias Schmidt told the BBC that Jaguar’s core buyers had abandoned the brand years ago, which left it with very little to lose.

JLR responded by betting big. Its 2023 strategy committed £15bn to new models and technology, and Jaguar made the bold, and much criticised, decision to stop selling its old cars before the new ones were ready. UK sales were halted in November 2024, the last F-Pace left the line in December 2025, and the brand spent the best part of two years with almost nothing in showrooms.

The wider group needs a win too. JLR is in the middle of cutting around 4,000 jobs as it targets £1.7bn of savings, after US tariffs, a cyberattack that halted its UK factories and a sharp fall in first-quarter profit. A Jaguar that pays its way at the top of the market would be a very welcome change of story, and the people behind the rebrand have largely moved on, with design chief Gerry McGovern gone, the campaign agency dropped and a new chief executive in charge at JLR.

Jaguar Type 01 price and specs

The Type 01 starts at £130,000 in the UK and $130,500 in the US, which puts it squarely against Bentley and the top end of Porsche and Mercedes-AMG.

It’s properly quick to go with it. Three electric motors produce around 1,000bhp, enough for 0-62mph in a claimed 3.2 seconds, and JLR quotes a range of up to 320 miles at sustained motorway speeds, with official UK test figures still to come. The 850-volt platform can add 200 miles of range in around 13 minutes on a 350kW charger, according to Jaguar, and the car carries more than 360 patent applications. You can see more of the Type 01’s four-seat interior, which Jaguar revealed in August.

Jaguar Type 01 design

This is the part that will divide people, and Jaguar knows it. Social media was predictably split overnight, with some comparing it to a hearse while others were won over straight away. Managing director Rawdon Glover says the company’s own research produced more very low scores than usual, but also more nines and tens, and his view is that a car bought on desire doesn’t need to please the middle ground.

We’re firmly in the nine-and-ten camp. The long bonnet, low roofline and huge wheels give the Type 01 the kind of proportions you’d normally find on a Bentley or a Rolls-Royce, and the minimalist detailing keeps it from looking fussy. A Jaguar that looked like a slightly sharper BMW would have vanished into the car park at Canary Wharf, and whatever else you say about this one, nobody is going to lose it there.

The business case for the Type 01

The early numbers are encouraging. Jaguar says more than 50,000 people have registered interest in the Type 01, and 78% of them have never owned a Jaguar before. Registering interest is a long way from paying a deposit, but if even a fraction of that converts, Jaguar has found the younger, wealthier audience it has spent two years chasing.

That shift in audience is the whole point, because Jaguar’s existing owners were never going to follow it this far. When the rebrand was first announced, a poll of 1,000 Jaguar owners by motoring platform Regit found more than 80% were against it, even though Regit itself backed Jaguar’s rebrand early. Read alongside the interest figures, that tells you Jaguar has effectively swapped one customer base for another, and the new one has far deeper pockets.

The economics back that up. Glover says the average US transaction price used to sit around $60,000 to $70,000, roughly half what the Type 01 now costs. Selling fewer cars at around twice the price, with luxury margins attached, is a far more sustainable model than chasing volume against the Germans, and a large limousine and an SUV are expected to follow on the same platform.

Will the Jaguar Type 01 succeed?

We’re backing it to fly. The design is the boldest thing Jaguar has done in decades, the price puts it in a part of the market where buyers want to stand out, and the early prototype drives have been positive. Motoring journalist Steve Fowler has called the Type 01 a last throw of the dice for the brand, but he also believes the car itself is good enough to pull it off.

The risks are real, of course. Demand for EVs in the US has cooled, Porsche and Mercedes-AMG aren’t going anywhere, and fast-growing Chinese luxury brands such as Denza are arriving with plenty of their own ambition. But standing still would have meant a slow fade into irrelevance. Jaguar needed a car that made people stop and stare, and last night in New York, it delivered one.